Hugo Questions

Wait, what’s a Hugo Award?
The Hugo Awards—for best science fiction & fantasy works, and for related professional and fan categories—are selected by the members of Worldcon, an annual convention. First given in 1953, the Hugos are arguably the most influential award for speculative fiction: extensively talked about within SF circles, they also carry a lot of weight in the book world even among people who don’t follow SF closely.

Why focus on creating an award within the Hugos & Worldcon, rather than some other award body, or starting a totally new award?
Two reasons: first, because the World Science Fiction Convention has “world” right there in the name, we think it would be great if it included and celebrated more global SF! And secondly: while there are a lot of other good and exciting awards, the Hugos seem to have the most influence both within SF genre spaces and in the larger literary world—so a Hugo spotlighting translated SF would do more to put these books on the radars and in the hands of a larger reading public.

How does adding a new Hugo work?
Changing anything about the Hugos requires changing the World Science Fiction Society’s constitution, which is done at Business Meetings during or prior to each year’s convention. Changes are proposed, discussed, and voted on by attending members; changes must be ratified the following year to become permanent. So, we’ll need to work with WSFS organizers to make sure our proposal is properly drafted and submitted; we’ll need to make a persuasive case for why the proposal should pass; and we’ll need enough supporting members at the Business Meetings where it’s voted on to move it ahead.

Why not try to create a special “Not-A-Hugo” award category for translations?
There’s definitely merit to this idea—works can only be shortlisted for one Hugo category, potentially creating a conflict between a novel showing up in the Translated and Novel categories, for instance. A non-Hugo award (like the Lodestar or Astounding awards, which are also voted on by Worldcon members) would avoid this conflict. However, as mentioned above, the Hugos proper make a big splash in genre spaces, and they’re also more visible to all kind of literary folks who are not otherwise very involved in science fiction or fantasy. Given the awards’ track record of not shortlisting translated fiction in established categories, we think that the benefits of an “officially Hugo” shortlist/award outweigh the hypothetical conflict.

When will these votes actually happen?
We want to make sure that this proposal has what it needs to succeed before submitting it: the wording, supporting evidence and arguments, signs of support from the community, and other resources. There are subcommittees of WSFS that may have suggestions, questions, and objections, and we’ll want to address those. We’d love it if an upcoming Worldcon would be interested in running the Translated Hugo as a Special Award—individual Worldcons can offer a one-time special Hugo, which sometimes act as a trial award for a new category. We’re very fired up about this project, and we’re hoping to get the process started at the 2026 Worldcon, but we’ll update our timing as we go, to give the proposal the best chance of success.

Specific Questions about this Award

Why is this award definition so broad? Could it include things like novellas or collections?
Yes, it would! Because we’re only adding one category for translated SF, we think it’s important that it be broad enough to catch shorter works—not all publishing traditions draw lines between novella and novel the way it's done in Anglophone SF, and a lot of great speculative fiction in translation is shorter than the Hugo novel definition. And, again because we’re proposing a single award to capture some of the variety and vibrancy of global SF, we think it’s a good idea to leave it open to collections or other non-novel formats if nominators think they’re worthwhile. We do think it’s worth keeping the award to a book-length object, though, to keep the list a little more manageable, and because the heightened visibility of a shortlist & award translate well to bookstores and libraries.

Are there really enough SF books being translated to fill out the category?
We think so! We’ve been compiling lists of potentially-eligible works, and what we’re finding for 2024, for example, seems to be in a totally plausible range to sustain the category. We’re still collecting data for recent years, too, and there are a number of popular translated forms (light novels and web novels, for instance) that could up these numbers significantly.

How can SF fans judge the quality of a translation?
This is not what the award is about—which would require that fans be fluent in many languages! Readers, nominators, and voters will judge these books just based on the quality of what they’re reading, and we think they’ll be impressed!

Are fans reading enough translated science fiction to nominate for this category?
We think this is a “yes and” situation. There are a lot of Anglophone SF fans and professionals reading translated speculative fiction—a fair amount of it gets reviewed and discussed for a variety of magazines & sites, for example, though it may not be obvious amid the longer volume of English-language material. And: adding the category would prompt a lot of passionate and enthusiastic readers to read more, to check out translated SF from around the world that doesn’t get the same kind of marketing buzz as the established commercial Anglophone imprints. The amount of dedication that goes into crowd-sourced nomination lists, and the number of clubs and groups that take the time to read and discuss entire Hugo categories prior to voting, makes us think that there are a lot of smart, invested, energetic readers who will make this category work, once they have the prompt to get started.

Won’t this award just block translated SF from winning their “real” category award?
Being realistic about the track record of the Hugos: the awards to date have almost never recognized work in translation. In 70 years of Best Novel awards, it has gone to a translated work once. A translated category is needed to shine on spotlight on non-Anglophone SF from around the world. We think that having space to routinely recognize and celebrate translated SF is more important than hypothetical conflicts with the established fiction categories.

What Can I Do?

The most important thing we will need supporters’s help with: when we make the proposal, it all comes down to votes at the Business Meeting. When we get to that point, we want as many supporters as we can find to be members and ready to attend!

Other things you can do to help in the meantime:

• Become a signatory to the initiative, to show that folks like this idea!
• If you’re not already a Worldcon-goer or Hugo-voter, take a look at how it works! Supporting memberships are a great way to dip your toe in—that gives you nominating and voting rights for the awards, as well as access to perks like the Voter’s Packet.
• Sign up for our mailing list while you’re at it, and follow us on social media (currently just Bluesky) for updates!
• Suggest eligible translated works so that we can add them to our lists, or contribute a panel idea that can be shared with interested conventions and conferences.
• Share the initiative! It’s hard to get the word out to all the SF-loving communities out there.
• If you're a reviewer, let us know if you've reviewed translated speculative fiction, especially recent works!
• We want to translate the main pages of this website into other languages—drop us a line if that’s something you’re interested in helping with!
• We might eventually add a donation page to offset some of the resources we’re hoping to share (stickers, flyers, that kind of thing), but for now just signing and sharing is support enough!